


in order

by youcouldmakealife



Series: but always in tandem [43]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 02:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11545347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife
Summary: “I miss him,” Robbie says. “I miss like — I miss him being my best friend, but I don’t know.”“What don’t you know?” Saul asks.“I’m like 99% sure I’m still in love with him,” Robbie says. “Like, as much as I hate his guts. So. How’s that supposed to be friendship?”





	in order

Lists are stupid. Lists are stupid, and Saul is ridiculous, and Robbie hates him.

Draft number whatever the fuck is getting balled up and thrown in the direction of the trash can when there’s a knock on his door. Robbie looks around at the mess of discarded pages, briefly anxious, but whatever, they’re all balled up and his ma’s the only one who comes up to his room. “Yeah?” he asks.

“I was wondering if you wanted to join me for—” his ma starts, as she opens the door, then clearly takes in the mess.

“Saul gave me homework,” Robbie says.

“Is it to make the best ball of paper you can?” she asks, and Robbie throws the closest in her direction. 

She catches it. “Don’t open that,” Robbie says quickly.

“I won’t,” she says. “I wouldn’t. Want to talk about it? Your papa’s in his office, it’d just be us.”

“Not really,” Robbie says, then when he sees her face fall a little, “But I could use a break, I guess.”

“Come down when you’re finished cleaning up, then,” she says, and Robbie scowls and gathers all his useless fucking drafts in the trash where they belong.

His ma’s on the back porch with a glass of wine when he comes down, a bottle of Sam Adams sweating beside her.

“Dr. Berkowitz gave you homework?” she asks, sounding a little skeptical.

“I know, right?” Robbie asks. “I blame you for this.”

“I know you don’t want to talk about it—” she says.

“It’s just Georgie shit,” Robbie says. “It’s always Georgie shit.”

“I didn’t know it was still hurting you this much,” she says.

“I mean,” Robbie says, then doesn’t know what to say.

“I’m sorry I didn’t know,” she says, and Robbie swallows.

“Not your fault,” he says.

She reaches out, squeezes the hand he doesn’t have wrapped around the bottle. “I got the right beer, right?” she asks. “I thought it was the right one, but you know I’m not really good at remembering labels, and—”

Robbie squeezes her hand back and relaxes, little by little, listening to a meandering monologue about her adventures at the liquor store.

*

It’s not that Robbie doesn’t write the list on purpose, it’s just that he has training, grabs dinner with Braden one night, Skypes with Matty another, more often than not ends up on the porch with his ma for a nightcap. He’s a very busy and important person, is what he’s saying. He doesn’t have time for lists.

Even without writing it down it’s all stuck knocking around his head anyway: the things he wrote before viciously scratching them out, the things he couldn’t bring himself to put to paper, the things that kept coming to his head again and again. The list in his head’s a bigger mess than all his discarded attempts, and he can’t make himself write it down, make himself look at it full on.

“Do you have your list?” is the first thing Saul asks him after his customary greeting. Robbie’s barely got his ass in the chair and he’s already getting called out.

“Kind of?” Robbie says. “Not really.”

“What do you mean?” Saul asks. He sounds a little disappointed, and Robbie feels — fuck, Robbie feels guilty now.

“I wrote like twenty drafts,” Robbie says, “But like — I kept throwing them out.”

“Why did you throw them out?” Saul asks.

“They weren’t right,” Robbie says. “Like either they were shit that I can’t have, or shit that Georgie can’t control, or shit that makes me sound like a sixteen year old girl. Like, fuck. I don’t know. There were a couple things, but.”

“A couple things what?” Saul asks, when Robbie stops up.

“Like a couple things kept coming up,” Robbie says. “But I don’t know if what I’m asking for is achievable, and that was basically the whole point, so.”

“Well,” Saul says. “What are you asking for?”

“Um,” Robbie says. “Space? I guess. That’s probably achievable.” As much as it can be, at least, sharing a locker room, a line. More space than last season, when Georgie had his dick in him more often than not toward the end, that’s achievable, if only because Georgie doesn’t want him anymore. “To be friends again, maybe, but I don’t know if that’s achievable, like, at all.”

“Why don’t you think that’s achievable?” Saul asks, and honestly, Robbie really doesn’t want to talk about this, with Saul or anyone, but it feels like the least he owes him, considering he couldn’t even do his fucking homework.

“I miss him,” Robbie says. “I miss like — I miss him being my best friend, but I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know?” Saul asks.

“I’m like 99% sure I’m still in love with him,” Robbie says. “Like, as much as I hate his guts. So. How’s that supposed to be friendship?”

Saul doesn’t say anything.

“And I fucking _hate_ him,” Robbie says. “Sometimes I feel like I’m just bouncing between one or the other and every time I remember I fucking love him I hate him more for making me feel that way about him, and it’s just. How the fuck can that be friendship, Saul?”

“It can’t,” Saul says.

“Wow, okay,” Robbie says. “Dropping the harsh fucking truths. I can’t be his friend, so what the fuck can I do, then?”

“I didn’t say you can’t be his friend,” Saul says.

“Pretty sure you just did,” Robbie says.

“You can’t be friends with someone you harbor this much anger towards,” Saul says. “You’re right about that.”

“Do you think I want to feel like this?” Robbie asks. “Do you think I’m _enjoying_ this?”

“No,” Saul says. “I don’t think you are.”

“Like, if you’ve got a magic wand you can wave and make me not angry, that’s great,” Robbie says. “But unless you do I don’t know what I’m supposed to think is achievable.”

Saul’s quiet, which Robbie guesses means there’s no magic wand reveal coming for him. Fucking figures.

“Like, I kept fucking trying, Saul,” Robbie says. “I kept trying to make a list that made sense, but they just — it didn’t _work_.”

“I believe you,” Saul says, which annoys him more for some reason.

“I don’t know what the fuck the right answer’s supposed to be, here,” Robbie snaps. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to want. I don’t fucking know what I _do_ want.”

“Do you think there’s a right answer?” Saul asks.

“I don’t know,” Robbie says. “If there is I don’t have it.”

“This wasn’t a test, Robbie,” Saul says. “There isn’t a right answer.”

“But there are wrong ones,” Robbie says.

“You’re talking about how you feel and what you need,” Saul says. “There aren’t any wrong answers.”

“I’m pretty fucking sure there are wrong feelings,” Robbie says.

“What would you describe as a wrong feeling?” Saul asks.

If Robbie started he probably wouldn’t stop. “You’re not about to tell me ‘oh, your feelings are all _normal_ , Robbie, A+, released from therapy.’”, he says instead.

“Your feelings aren’t invalid,” Saul says. 

“But they’re not healthy,” Robbie says.

Saul gives him finger guns, and Robbie can’t help but laugh. It annoys him, a little, how much he’s grown to like him.

“Can you just give me some advice?” Robbie asks. “I get that you’re like — I really need some advice. Something you think is achievable, whatever it is I’m supposed to want. Please.”

Saul’s silent. 

“ _Please_ ,” Robbie says.

“What do you want your relationship with Georgie to look like in ideal circumstances?” Saul asks. “Should he remain with the Capitals.”

“I don’t _know_ , I told you,” Robbie says.

“And,” Saul says, like Robbie gave him an actual answer. “How do you think you can achieve that?”

“Saul,” Robbie says. “For fuck’s sake.”

“Robbie,” Saul says, almost gently. “I think you already know what’s on that list, and I think you already know what I’m going to say you should do with that list.”

“What if I’m just imagining you saying what I want to hear?” Robbie asks. “Huh? What then?”

“Do you think what I would suggest is something you want to hear?” Saul asks.

“No,” Robbie mutters, then, “I don’t want to…I don’t — this is going to blow up in my fucking face, Saul. You want me to come back here even more fucked up than I started?”

“How do you think you’re going to feel, walking into training camp, if he’s there?” Saul asks. 

“Which might not happen,” Robbie argues.

“You said ‘it’s not done yet’,” Saul says, and when Robbie frowns, “Last week, when you said you didn’t want Georgie to be traded. You said ‘it’s not done yet’.”

“So what,” Robbie says. “You think I should finish it? Put it out of its fucking misery?”

“I think you need to figure out, if it isn’t finished, what direction you want it to go in,” Saul says.

“You sound like a fucking philosophy major,” Robbie says.

“I minored in philosophy, actually,” Saul says.

“That’s the least surprising shit I’ve ever heard,” Robbie mutters. “I bet you had a goatee, too. I bet you wore black turtlenecks and ugly ass giant glasses.” He doesn’t even wear glasses, but Robbie _still_ bets he did.

Saul smiles. 

“Don’t make me do this,” Robbie says.

“Robbie,” Saul says. “I can’t make you do anything.”

Robbie rubs a hand over his face. “Fine,” he says. “Fine.”

He ends up texting Georgie in Saul’s office, right before their time’s up, because he’s not sure he trusts himself to do it if Saul isn’t there, quietly expecting more of Robbie than Robbie thinks he’s capable of giving. 

_Can we talk before training camp starts?_ Robbie texts, reading it aloud when he’s done. “Need proof?” he asks, holding out his phone. 

Saul smiles faintly. “I trust you, Robbie,” he says.

“That makes one of us,” Robbie says. 

His phone buzzes a few times on his drive home, and it’s all he can do not to grab at it the first time he hits a red light, but the last thing he needs right now is to be _more_ distracted. He ends up pulling off at the mall an exit before the one he usually takes, telling himself he needs to pick up sneakers from Dick’s. Even he doesn’t believe him. He does need new sneakers, but the second he’s parked, he’s thumbing open his phone, and he doesn’t have a lot of faith he’s going to be in the mood to go shopping in a minute.

 _Yeah_ , Georgie’s texted back. _Phone or in person?_

 _In person’s probably better_ , Robbie says, even though the thought of it makes his stomach twist.

 _I can come up to Boston tomorrow_ , Georgie texts back almost immediately. _I’m assuming you’re done training by evening?_

 _You don’t have to go out of your way, whenever you get back to DC’s fine_ , Robbie texts.

 _I’m home for Will’s bday it’s not a big deal_ , Georgie says.

Robbie doesn’t know how he feels about doing it without like, talking it over with Saul first, but he has a feeling Saul would be all ‘I can’t tell you what to say, that’s something only you know, Robbie’. He can imagine it in Saul’s voice and everything.

 _ok,_ he texts, and resigns himself to staying up half the night trying to figure out what the fuck he’s going to say.

 _Maybe I should make a list_ , he thinks, and has to bite his lip to keep the hysterical laughter at bay.


End file.
